Red Guards

This weekend I did a lot of walking - mostly in the old French Concession part of Shanghai. This area is lined with trees and colonial-style buildings from the early 20th Century. I retraced the story of the author of "Life and Death in Shanghai". I walked from the old YMCA building where her daughter was murdered by Red Guards during the Cultural Revolution to the house they put her in after her release from seven years solitary confinement. Walking these streets today it takes some effort to picture how things were in the late 60s and early 70s when all of China went crazy. Walking down the street looking at the faces of people in their 50s you wonder if they were some of the millions of Red Guards that turned China upside down at the behest of Chairman Mao. Today, no one admits to having been a Red Guard.

All that walking on the first clear weekend since I got here reminded me that prolonged exposure to the sun cause painful burns. I just hadn't seen the sun in over two months. Too much smog.